CAA News Today

In its regular roundup of obituaries, CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, architects, photographers, and others whose work has significantly influenced the visual arts. The beginning of 2013 was marked by the loss of the artist Richard Artschwager and the critics Ada Louise Huxtable and Thomas McEvilley. Two longtime CAA members, Paul B. Arnold and Carl N. Schmalz Jr., also died recently.

• Paul B. Arnold, emeritus professor of fine arts at Oberlin College, died on July 2, 2012, at the age of 93. A CAA member since 1945 and president of the Board of Directors from 1986 to 1988, Arnold was an artist who began his career working in watercolor but later focused on printmaking
• Richard Artschwager, an American painter and sculptor who emerged during the Pop era but whose work embraced diverse media, passed away on February 9, 2013. He was 89 years old
• Bonni Benrubi, a photography dealer based in New York, died on November 29, 2012, at the age of 59. She was among the first gallery owners to specialize exclusively in modern and contemporary photography
• Daniel Blue, a Chicago-based sculptor who worked in metal, was found dead on January 2, 2013. He was 55 years old
• Simon Cerigo, an art dealer, curator, collector, and avid attendee of gallery openings in New York, died on January 20, 2013, at age 60. He operated an eponymous gallery in the East Village from 1985 to 1987
• Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy, a Nigerian painter and illustrator based in the United Kingdom, passed away on December 17, 2012. She was 60 years old
• Thomas Cornell, an artist and longtime professor at Bowdoin College in Maine, died on December 7, 2012, at the age of 75. He helped to establish the Visual Arts Department at his school in 1962
• Burhan Doğançay, a Turkish artist who had lived in New York since the 1960s, died on January 16, 2013, at age 83. The Istanbul Modern Art Museum held a large survey of his abstract works of urban walls last year
• Tejas Englesmith, a former assistant director for Whitechapel Gallery in London during the 1960s who later settled in Houston, died on February 7, 2013. He was 71. Englesmith also served as a curator for the Jewish Museum and director of the Leo Castelli Gallery
• Leonard Flomenhaft, a lawyer and stockbroker who opened Flomenhaft Gallery in New York with his wife Eleanor, passed away on February 8, 2013. He was 90 years old
• Antonio Frasconi, a master woodcut artist from Uruguay who settled in Norwalk, Connecticut, died on January 8, 2013, at age 93
• Clarke Henderson Garnsey, professor emeritus of art history and former chair of the Department of Art at the University of Texas at El Paso, died on March 10, 2012. He was 98
• Raukura “Ralph” Hotere, a leading abstract artist from New Zealand who showed his work internationally, died on February 24, 2013, at the age of 81
• Ada Louise Huxtable, a celebrated architectural critic for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, died on January 7, 2013, at age 91. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for her writing
• George Kokines, an abstract artist based in Chicago, died on November 26, 2012. He was 82. Kokines had taught at several schools, including Northwestern University
• Balthazar Korab, a leading architectural photographer who captured buildings by Eero Saarinen on film, died on January 15, 2013. He was 86 years old
• Udo Kultermann, an internationally recognized scholar who taught for nearly thirty years at Washington University in Saint Louis, passed away on February 9, 2013. He was 85. CAA has published a special obituary on Kultermann
• Farideh Lashai, an Iranian artist known for her lyrical abstract painting and multimedia installations, died on February 24, 2013, at age 68. She helped found and was a member of the Neda Group, a collective of twelve female Iranian artists, in the late 1990s
• Alden Mason, a painter who lived and worked in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, died on February 6, 2013. He was 93 years old
• Thomas McEvilley, a poet, scholar, and art critic based in New York, died on March 2, 2013. He was 73. Among his numerous books are Art and Otherness: Crisis in Cultural Identity (1992), Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (1999), and The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies (2002)
• Melanie Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in art history and archaeology at Washington University in Saint Louis, died on February 1, 2013. She was 46 years old
• Carl N. Schmalz Jr., an artist and art historian who taught for decades at Bowdoin College and Amherst College, died on February 22, 2013, at age 86. CAA has published a special obituary on Schmalz, who had been a CAA member since 1951
• William F. Stern, a Houston architect who was a principal at Stern and Bucek Architects, died on March 1, 2013, at the age of 66. He also served as an adjunct associate professor of architectural history at the University of Houston
• Michelle Walker, a former dancer and a Californian arts administrator, was found dead on January 29, 2013, at age 53. She had served as director of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission from 1992 to 2006
• Casey Williams, a Houston photographer known for his “found abstractions,” passed away on January 1, 2013. He was 65
• Bernard A. Zuckerman, an Atlanta businessman and philanthropist, died on February 22, 2013, at age 91. Kennesaw State University is scheduled to open the Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art in September of this year

Read all past obituaries in the arts in CAA News, which include special texts written for CAA. Please send links to published obituaries, or your completed texts, to Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, for the next list.